Bridge connecting Drury Plaza with Main Plaza complete

Main Plaza and the Drury Plaza Hotel, 105 S. St. Mary’s St., are now friends ’till the end. Though you could walk to the other and back via Commerce and Market streets, a 70-foot steel pedestrian bridge now connects the two — specifically, the Drury at the River Walk with Portal San Fernando, the pretty botanic linkage that inclines from the River Walk to the plaza.

The bridge (completed about a month ago) is one of two donations by Drury Hotels to the city — the other being the River Walk expansion that connects the tips of the River Walk horseshoe. Cost figures for both projects were not immediately available.

The bridge took about six months to build, according to Kevin Whitfield, vice president of development and planning with Drury Southwest, the construction arm of Drury Hotels. A formal ceremony with city and Drury dignitaries is scheduled for September.

Southtown artist Judith Maxwell designed the copper panels on the sides of the bridge.

On the Drury side of the bridge, some of the hotel’s River Walk space is being converted into convention and meeting space, while the hotel is searching for a tenant (like a restaurant) to occupy the remaining area, according to Curt Greer, the Drury hotel’s general manager.

Meanwhile over at the plaza, a denser crushed granite surface is being poured. Main Plaza Conservation, the plaza’s nonprofit caretaker, expects the project to be complete by Aug. 15.

“This will be the end of the projects that we have that will require fencing surrounding the plaza,” said Jane Pauley-Flores, director of the conservancy.